Bunny, Queen of the Hop

You’ll see her in places where the homeless gather, handing out bags of potato chips or pretzels she’s bought with her own money.

An attractive woman in her late 40s, there’s a kind of bounce to the way she does it, as if she’s distributing autographed pictures to clusters of her fans outside a studio in Philly.

And maybe, in a way, she is, because about 30 years ago she was Bunny Gibson, the sweetheart of Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” arguably the biggest teen-age attraction television ever staged. Her fans numbered in the thousands.

Those were the days when guys like Frankie Avalon and Edd (Kookie) Byrnes were every girl’s dreamboats, when the Shirelles and the Coasters were the singers teen-agers listened to, and the kids on the show were dancing the swim and the mashed potato.

Bunny Gibson, whose real name is Kathleen, was a “Bandstand” regular, a spirited dancer with short hair, a winning smile and the kind of kittenish enthusiasm that endeared her to just about everybody.

For three years, until the show moved out of Philly, her face was in all the fan magazines, especially the Bandstand Boogie Newsletter, and girls who watched the show copied her clothes and hairstyle.

Today, people still call her Bunny and she still considers “Bandstand” a defining moment in her life, but that’s not what she’s all about anymore. Hands that reach out for food are a lot more important to her than the hands that once reached out for autographs.

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Gibson began distributing food and clothing about two years ago. After returning from a stay in Europe, it came to her in an epiphany of patriotism how much she loved her country and how she ought to do something for it.

Exactly what she ought to do was made clear one day when she was on the beach near the Santa Monica Pier.

“There was a man sleeping under the pier,” she said to me the other day in her Marina del Rey home, “and when I walked by, he woke up and said hello. I said hello back and as I was walking away he said thank you.”

“He was so grateful that someone had acknowledged him, that someone had just said hello. I thought about it that night, and I cried.”

Ever since then, this onetime Queen of the Hop has been knocking herself out gathering stuff to give to the people who live under piers and freeway bridges and in parks and doorways, from Skid Row to the ocean.

I heard about her through a singing drug agent who performs sometimes at a New York-style restaurant called Matty’s. He’d seen her handing out food and clothing all by herself in the mean parts of town and was impressed by someone who’d do that without the fanfare that usually accompanies altruistic efforts in a city where even dogs have press agents.

It was all the more astounding to him when he discovered she’d been the sweetheart of “American Bandstand” and was still in show biz. She appears in plays, movies and soap operas and, like every performer, is always looking for work. People like that just don’t wander Skid Row alone, giving food to the hungry, sans hype and glory. So the singing narc gave me a call.

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Gibson danced for me that day at her home, showing me the steps she did when she was an ebullient 14-year-old in the old “Bandstand” era. She talks about that time with the breathlessness of a kid, then relives with sadness the moment the show moved on.

“There seemed like no other life after that,” she said when the dance was done and she was standing quietly in the middle of her living room. “I’d have stayed with that show until I was 50, but one day it was gone, and that was it. I got married when I was 16 to a guy who used to watch Bunny dance and fell in love with her.”

Now divorced with two grown daughters and four grandchildren, she could have easily clung to the “Bandstand” years like a kid clutching a teddy bear into midlife. But you move on if you’re mature, past the hurt and past all the could-have-beens to a place that beckons with new wonders.

America’s “Bandstand” sweetheart did move on and discovered human need. “Even when I’m not there,” she says, “I can still see hands reaching out for food. They come from all directions, and the food is gone in less than five minutes. I only wish I had more to give. . . .”

I used to wonder what happened to all those kids on television after the sets were shut down and the studios had gone dark. Now, at least, I know what happened to one. Bunny Gibson, Queen of the Hop, has taken on a greater, more significant role, and hands are still reaching out to her.